Unresolved trauma, this is what it looks like.
You have the car you've always dreamed of, the house you love, your children are in all the right schools and you have money in the bank. You should be really happy, but you don't feel it. What you notice is a deep void in your ability to feel content, happy and joyful. You notice an inability to talk about emotions, either yours or your loved ones. You are comfortable and believe you are safe but far from satisfied.
Unresolved trauma, this is how it can affect you. You no longer can successfully have those intimate discussions with your partner or your children. You may feel, in fact, unappreciated, unheard, undervalued, disconnected or even invisible to the very people that love you. You feel there is a void inside of you, one you just can't quite figure out but it's there.
We don't heal from trauma the way we used to heal from it. Unresolved trauma does not need to be talked about hour after hour after hour, where all of that suffering and pain is continually brought up.
In order to evolve beyond our unresolved trauma, we start with who we are now. Three major areas need to be addressed.
One, we remove trauma from every cell of the body and we do that by physical means that we can self-administer called somatic reinvention. Why is that important? Because when we're traumatized, it isn't that what we see or what happens to us just sits in our brain and creates misery.
Those experiences actually deposit trauma inside the cells of our body and stay there. They feel a little bit like glue and that glue begins to pull everything together to where we feel restricted. Maybe we realize that we can't breathe as deeply, or we don't feel as much sensation in our body. We tend to want to just contract in and curl up, and that is no way to live. Also, trauma left unattended in the mind and body causes illness, disease, mental illness and anxiety. So we must get the trauma out of the body.
The second thing that we must do is we must rewire our nervous system. Unresolved trauma keeps us agitated. It keeps us in a constant state of survival. When we're traumatized, we've been scared, we've been terrorized, right? And when we're terrorized, our brain turns on survival mode thinking and turns off everything else. When we stay in survival mode for months or years, we can get stuck there. We become stuck thinking only about immediate survival. And when we're there, we can't access the higher executive functioning of our brain. Without access to the brains’ higher functions, , we can't make our best choices, think clearly or have conversations that are truly for our highest good.
In this brain space our brain often can think of only four things to do. We could either fight, flight, (run),, freeze, or fail. So we either fight back, (this includes actual physical and verbal fighting, pleading, manipulation, people pleasing and lying), run away, freeze in the moment and disconnect, or fail in some other way. All of these responses can end in failure. The reason that happens is that we aren't able to access the higher areas of the brain that allow us to use our skills of executive functioning, the true problem solving skills that help us manage conflict and be able to make choices that are the best choices we can make for ourselves and all that are involved in that moment. So rewiring the nervous system must happen.
The third thing that must happen is that we have to redesign our brain/body neural pathways. You see, trauma changes the way the brain works. It limits our ability to think , comprehend...look at a situation from every angle, feel, and respond in optimal ways to ourselves and to others. So we have to learn new strategies that create new pathways in our brain to redevelop our ability to truly comprehend life, behave in life and move through life in ways that increase our well being,happiness, joy, success, connectedness and zest for living.
While this is happening we are learning how to love ourselves which will inform us of how we will choose to be loved by and love others. We cultivate compassion, forgiveness, responsible right action, the capacity to make self honoring choices and set healthy boundaries so we can grow the change you want to see in ourselves.
We are cultivating the skills that create space between us and our thoughts so we can respond instead of react allowing us to take back control of our minds and bodies instead of being hijacked by them.
We are learning Critical, Systemic and Intrinsic thinking skills as well as applying business practices to life to create rapid and sustainable change towards getting to where we ultimately want to be in life from where we are now.
When we use this strategy to resolve and evolve beyond our trauma, we actually not only clear up all of those past traumatic experiences, whether they be in relationships or experiences themselves, we also become our peak performance selves in any or every area of our lives because we are learning new skills and strategies that propel us forward and upward. We actually achieve the highest, most optimal level of function within ourselves for our highest good and the highest good of all involved. We become our best selves in the end.
And when we become our best selves, the pain and suffering that we had felt before, it merely blows away like the wind blowing footsteps away in the sand. We then are left with all of this new space to truly feel joy ,happiness ,love ,connection and passion. No longer, are we hearing the continuing loops of negative self-talk that brings us back into our shame, blame or unworthiness . We no longer ever hear those messages, because we have learned through our own actions how valuable we are to ourselves. We learn through our own actions how much we love ourselves.
And when we do that simple thing, it changes the behaviors that we wish to use as we go through our life. It changes the way we want to treat ourselves, so that changing habits of behavior doesn't become something that's difficult, that we have to suffer through. It becomes the organic expression of a new way in which we think about ourselves and think about our lives.
Do you feel a void in your life that you can't put your finger on? Can you connect that void to some traumatic experience of your past or a family member's past? If so, are you ready to do something positive about it?
If not now. . . when?
Is this you?
If the answer is yes, I can help. I will help take away the haunting voice inside you that causes shame, guilt, resentment or steals your joy; that voice that says I don't want to live this way now. I can reignite your emotions and feelings so you can better connect with yourself and others. I can lead you down the path where you can introduce your current self to the person you are meant to be.
Would you like to talk to me?
Please book a free Find Your Clarity Call with me and let's chat.